Urban Legends And Their Ridiculous Origins

In 1969, Tim Harper, a school newspaper editor at Drake University in Iowa, created the urban legend that Paul McCartney died.

www.cracked.com:

We don't expect our craziest urban legends to exist for good reasons, but we do at least expect their origins to be mysterious. If you can just point to the guy who made up the crazy story in the first place, what are we doing here?

It turns out that's a good question for everyone who has ever found themselves debating the authenticity of one.